


we could stop the world

by unholyconfessions (orphan_account)



Series: remember the secrets we've told [7]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3178967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/unholyconfessions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn’t long before the sky closes in on them. Barry distances himself from Eddie but Eddie’s hand follows him, touching Barry’s arm and Barry’s neck when his breath becomes shorter, spastic. A dark cloud roars in disapproval when Barry gives in to Eddie’s touch as Eddie’s thumb travels across his cheek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we could stop the world

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on this one for a couple of days... There was something about it that didn't feel _right_ , but after editing, this seems quite nice. I borrowed some of Barry's speech to Iris in 1.09 because the feels were too strong. Picks up straight after the previous installment.
> 
> I really appreciate the support, kudos, comments, bookmarks, and overall encouraging words so far. I couldn't be happier with the way this ship was received. Hopefully we'll all be able to keep it going for a while. (Or forever, really. I wouldn't mind that.)
> 
> This is unbetaed as usual, so I apologize in advance. Feedback is very welcome. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Time slows down. 

The smell of coffee dangles in the air, burns its way down his throat and into his lungs, forces itself out through a gasp; stale and bitter. 

Every breath Barry takes is like breathing through smoke.

Iris stares at him with muted eyes, suspended in time and space, lost in a void that only Barry can see. He reaches for her, touches her cheek with his thumb, catches a tear that isn’t there yet, but will be, soon, and leans in, presses his lips to her forehead and breathes her in.

“I love you,” he speaks against her skin because he knows he won’t be able to say it once the seconds start passing. “I’m so sorry.”

He presses a kiss to her hair before distancing himself, wipes at his eyes when he can’t help the wetness in them any longer.

Chatter fills up the silence, customers start getting their cups refilled, a car passes across the street.

Barry opens his mouth to speak and finds that he can’t. He glances at Eddie, who smiles at him, a hand coming up to squeeze his arm, and Iris’ gaze is heavy on them when Barry leans into the touch, on instinct. 

“Eddie, what’s going on?” Iris asks when it becomes clear Barry won’t answer her questions. 

Eddie lets his hand slide down Barry’s arm, fingers brushing against Barry’s for half a second before his warmth is gone. Barry looks away. Eddie says, “Can we go somewhere quieter?”

Iris’ eyes trace a path between them. She nods. “I’ll just,” she says, gesturing over her shoulder, toward her manager. “Roof?”

Eddie nods back, hand wrapping around Barry’s arm when Barry doesn’t move. He gives it a small tug and pulls Barry’s attention to him.

“Hey, Allen,” he says. “Come on.”

Barry heaves a sigh and nods, allows Eddie to lead him up the stairs and out onto the roof. He takes a moment to readjust to the sudden change of environment, opening his lungs to breathe in the untainted air. 

It isn’t long before the sky closes in on them. Barry distances himself from Eddie, but Eddie’s hand follows him, touching Barry’s arm and Barry’s neck when his breath becomes shorter, spastic. A dark cloud roars in disapproval when Barry gives in to Eddie’s touch as Eddie’s thumb travels across his cheek.

The possibility of Iris finding them like this, in each other’s personal spaces, doesn’t scare him as much as it should. Maybe it’s Eddie’s hands on him, or maybe it’s his brain giving up on any possibility of having Iris in any way, but his heart finds its pace again: slow, steady.

“Allen, you okay?” Eddie asks, hands on both sides of Barry’s face. 

Barry nods, wets his bottom lip when Eddie’s face comes too close to his. He doesn’t miss the way Eddie’s eyes follow the movement. He closes the distance between them when Eddie opens his mouth to speak, tastes the would-be words with his tongue and swallows them.

He brushes Eddie’s hands away from him as they pull apart, but keeps their fingers entwined so he can give them a light pull, bringing Eddie in for another kiss. It soothes him, somehow, as his fists close around the front of Eddie’s suit jacket, controlling their pace as their lips move against one another.

“Hey,” Eddie says, mouth pressed to Barry’s, and his voice is rough, warm, makes Barry want to kiss him harder. “Not here.”

Eddie’s hands find Barry’s wrists, peels Barry away from him. An unsteady sigh leaves Barry’s chest as he takes a step back, runs a hand over his face and nods. Eddie’s right—this isn’t the time or the place. 

“Barry?”

Barry’s neck snaps toward the door and he almost loses his balance from the intensity of Iris’ stare as she takes a step in his direction, stopping before taking the second. Barry glances down at his feet, shakes his head when the words escape him.

“Iris—” he and Eddie say in unison, but Iris cuts through them:

“No,” she says. Her voice breaks. “No.”

It’s not what it looks like. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Barry’s brain goes over a hundred excuses he could give her, settles on none. There’s nothing he can tell her that’ll make it okay. The look in her eyes—she’s the toughest person he knows, but nothing will be able to fix the lifelessness in them, not for a while. 

He glances at Eddie, broadens the space between them when it becomes clear that they could still touch if he moved as little as an inch. His lungs starve for air as his body works thought the panic rising in his chest. Barry’s sure that, if he concentrated hard enough, he could hear the droplet of sweat as it rolls down his jaw and into his shirt, seeping into the fabric. 

Barry memorizes the brightness of Iris’ eyes under the dipping sky, betrayal suspended in them but not overcome in anger, not yet; he memorizes the curl in her muscles, where shoulder meets neck, pulse running slow but resilient under the skin. He memorizes it because he won’t have any more moments like this.

She shuffles a foot, ready to take a step back as Barry moves in her direction. Barry stops mid-stride, reaches out for her.

“Don’t,” she says, drawing her arm back, close to her chest. “Don’t touch me.”

The first raindrop hits the concrete between them with a wet slap. Barry looks up, blinks when a bead hits his left cheek and lets it slide its way down to his neck, into his collar. The coldness of it challenges the heat on his skin.

“You probably don’t want to hear this,” he says, brings his eyes back down with a smile that he knows doesn’t reach his eyes, “and I never thought I’d be able to tell you this, but I love you, Iris. I loved you before I even knew what the word love meant,” a pause, a shuffle of his feet, clouds rolling overhead, “but I was afraid that if I told you and you didn’t feel the same way, I would lose you.”

Barry laughs at the irony, has to. Iris’ eyebrows come together as she watches him; Barry follows when her gaze moves over to Eddie.

“I know this isn’t what you expected,” Barry says, raises his voice when a particularly loud thunder strikes above, “and my timing couldn’t be worse, but I just couldn’t lie to you anymore.”

“You have no right,” says Iris, wrapping her arms around herself as if to shield from the rain. Her shoulders shake; Barry isn’t sure why. “You have no right to tell me that. Not like this, Barry.”

They’re soaked within seconds. 

A strand of wet hair falls in her eyes and Barry has the urge to brush it away, tuck it behind her ear, but he doesn’t give in. He keeps his hands by his sides, lets the water wash the itch away.

There’s a certain crispness in the air as it spills around them, over them, rain threatening to force its way down into the concrete. Barry allows the sound to occupy the silence, can’t think of anything to say other than apologies that he knows won’t repair the damage.

Iris deserves more, deserves better.

“How long?” she asks, eyes fixed on the ground, somewhere between her and Barry. 

Barry glances at Eddie, back at her, says even though he doesn’t know the exact answer, “Not long.”

She nods her head, presses her lips into a thin line. The wetness on her cheeks isn’t from tears, Barry can tell; she’s holding them back, but there’s a storm in her stare, matched to the one surrounding them but louder, wilder, as if she were trying to pinpoint exactly when things went haywire. It stops when she looks up, straight into Barry, almost through him, and turns into a quiet drizzle.

“When I asked you to talk to him,” she says, hands curling around her own skin, marking it, eyes flicking in Eddie’s direction and back at Barry. She smiles but there’s no liveliness behind it. “You said you couldn’t, but I insisted. I thought—”

The sentence dies in the rain. Barry swallows.

“I thought you didn’t feel comfortable enough, talking to him,” Iris says, shakes her head, “but I see it now.”

“Iris—” Eddie’s interrupted by a hand Iris holds up at him.

“I think you should leave.” She glances at Barry. “Both of you.”

Barry nods, allowing his shoulders to fall. He can’t look at Iris as he passes by her, close enough that he can feel the heat radiating from her. Eddie is a silent shadow behind him as he stops at the door, fingers around the handle, to look back at Iris.

Her dress has gone from grey to an almost-black, darkened by the rain. The fabric stretches over her shoulders as they tremble, clings to her like a second skin. The sky spills harder around her, water surrounding her silhouette.

Barry can’t watch it.

Eddie’s touch stings as his hand finds Barry’s arm on their way down the stairs. Barry stops mid-step, doesn’t turn around even though Eddie asks him to.

“I can’t have this conversation right now,” he says, draws him arm back and away from Eddie’s grip. 

He starts walking, water dripping a path behind him as he stumbles back into Jitters. A few people turn to look his way; he recognizes one or two, knows they’ll be talking about him, about Iris, as soon as he’s out the door.

“Barry, please.”

His legs carry him a block away before his heart starts protesting, pressed to his ribs until the pressure is too much and he stops, braces himself against a wall and empties his stomach on the sidewalk.

“I’m fine,” he mutters, batting Eddie’s hand away when it comes close enough to touch. Eddie’s shoulders fall and Barry’s stomach drops again. He wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, shakes his head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to,” he says, gestures vaguely with a hand.

“’S okay, Allen.”

The rain quiets down around them; a cloud gives way to a bright smidgen in the sky.

“I don’t want to be alone right now,” Eddie says, and the invitation dangles in the air for a long second. To Barry, it sounds strangely like, _I want to be with you._

Barry nods, swallowing the bitter taste on his tongue, follows the movement with his eyes as Eddie runs a hand through his wet hair, mimics it without thinking. Eddie smiles, more compassionate than amused, and Barry doesn’t know how much of it is sincere, but it’s not his place to guess. 

He’ll take what he can get and, right now, that’s enough.

***

The silence allows the wounds to heal, the smallest bit, as they stumble into Eddie’s apartment, dripping wet over the carpet.

Eddie is the one who starts shedding his clothes first—suit, tie, shirt, undershirt. Barry stays perfectly still for a moment, watches the smooth, even strokes of Eddie’s muscles under his skin before he realizes what he’s doing and frowns, averts his eyes. 

Eddie disappears into the bedroom and Barry gives him a moment before following, finds him in clean, dry clothes. He pushes a pile of clothes and a towel into Barry’s chest, says, “Here, go ahead. I’m going to order us something,” and Barry nods, thankful, even though he’s not hungry at all.

Barry waits until he can hear Eddie pick up the phone in the living room. The bed creaks under his weight as he drops onto it, toweling his hair, an elbow propped up on his knee. The room still smells like them, someway, like he and Eddie tangled up in each other, spicy and strong and with a hint of Iris in the background. It itches, scratches at Barry’s throat and he has to swallow it down, keep it in and hope it doesn’t resurface.

Barry makes quick work of peeling his clothes off him and throwing on Eddie’s. He walks into the bathroom, uses Eddie’s mouthwash, leaves his clothes in a puddle in the bathtub, where Eddie’s are, and it shouldn’t be this easy, but it is. 

Those walls are familiar to him, stripped of anything but paint and windows, impersonal, but comfortable, kind. Barry wonders, as he slumps back into the bed, if Iris feels—felt—as safe as him with them surrounding her. 

His brain doesn’t have time to come up with an answer before he’s out cold.

***

Barry wakes up to birds chirping outside the window, and nothing else.

He props himself up on his hands, sitting up with his back against the headboard, and scans the room for any sign of Eddie. The spot next to him is cold, still made, but missing a pillow. Barry frowns, drags himself up and to the living room, where the pillow sits on the couch, a sheet folded underneath it.

Another quick scan reveals a note on the kitchen island, a key serving as paper weight on top of it. Barry can’t help the smile as he reads it. He traces the key with a finger before he takes it and heads home to change.

***

Joe isn’t surprised by his lateness, but Singh doesn’t seem amused. Barry almost doesn’t bother with an excuse, but a glance at Eddie tells him he might want to.

“I, uh—” Barry starts. His brain can’t come up with anything even remotely plausible. “I—”

“Allen,” Eddie says, slapping him on the arm with a folder. “Did you get what I asked?”

Barry opens his mouth. Joe raises an eyebrow as if to say _I thought it was_ my _job to cover for you,_ and there’s an impending doom behind it, because it won’t take long before Joe adds two and two together.

“I—I did,” Barry stutters, fishes the note from his pocket, Eddie’s key hidden inside it. “There you go.”

Eddie’s smile almost makes Barry’s knees buckle. 

Almost.

***

It’s lunchtime and Eddie still hasn’t said a thing that isn’t strictly work related, until he comes to find Barry at the lab with some evidence Singh wants Barry to reanalyze and stops by the doorway, hands on either side of his waist.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he says.

Barry blinks a few times before he processes Eddie’s words and realizes what he meant. His lips shape around an _oh_ but no sound comes out. Barry nods, clears his throat, adds, “Sorry. I guess I was tired,” under his breath and goes back to the sample Eddie just gave him.

“Bar.” Barry feels compelled to glance back at Eddie. He wipes his hands on his jeans as Eddie asks, “Are you okay?”

Barry lets the question speak for itself for a second. He smiles, says, “No, not really,” and Eddie’s shoulders slump. Barry gives him a chuckle, shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

“Seriously? Because you look like crap,” Eddie says, matter-of-factly, and Barry has to laugh, shoulders shaking. Eddie smiles, although Barry can see the concern in his eyes. “C’mon, Allen, let’s grab some lunch.”

Barry considers the offer for a moment, tapping his foot against the floor. He glances between his microscope and Eddie before nodding to himself. Eddie raises his eyebrows.

“I guess I’m a little hungry.”

***

“A _little_ hungry?”

Barry wipes at his mouth with a napkin, fighting a laugh at the sight of Eddie’s raised eyebrows. “Sorry,” he mutters around his sixth cheeseburger. “I forgot to mention that I need to eat a little more than the average person.”

“Remind me not to ever take you out on dates.”

Barry is about to take another bite when his brain trips up on Eddie’s words. He stops with his burger in midair, eyes darting up to catch Eddie eating a fry, and smiles, but doesn’t comment on it.

They eat—Barry does; Eddie watches Barry devour his seventh burger while sipping his soda and picking at his cold, no-longer-crispy fries that Barry finishes for him later—mostly in silence. 

Eddie’s eyes sometimes wander to a couple sitting at a table nearby, not much older than them. The loosened tie and shirt give Barry a glimpse of skin tightening over the muscles on Eddie’s shoulders whenever there’s a kiss, or a touch, or an overly-affectionate laugh. 

Barry sometimes forgets that, while he dreamed about having all of that with Iris, Eddie actually did. It was clear to everyone, Barry included, that what they had was _theirs_ , and Barry took that away from them. Maybe this isn’t just about what he and Eddie did to Iris, but what they did to themselves.

“Hey, Eddie,” Barry says, wiping his ketchup-covered fingers on a crumpled napkin, and Eddie’s eyes snap back to him, almost alarmed. “Are _you_ okay?”

Eddie hesitates; someone else might have missed it, but not Barry. “Yeah,” he says, nods, but doesn’t meet Barry’s eyes. “I’m fine.”

Barry nods but doesn’t push it, finishes his soda in silence. 

Eddie picks up the check when they’re done, disregards Barry’s protests with a tap on Barry’s arm and a whispered, “You can get the next one.”

Barry’s stomach curls at the promise alone, but _shit_ , that smile—his brain does endless loops around it, leaves him dizzy and stunned and he has to stop Eddie with a hand on his arm as they step out onto the sidewalk. 

Eddie turns to face him, his eyebrows knit, asks, “Allen?” 

Barry can’t string a sentence together. He blurts out, “I don’t know how I feel about you,” the moment the thought runs through his mind.

“Sorry,” he amends when Eddie’s shoulders fall. He tugs at Eddie’s arm, brings him an inch closer, but not close enough. “That’s not what I meant. I—I like you. A lot, Eddie.” Barry can’t fight the smile as he says it, but he also can’t fight the bitterness in his mouth. “But what we did,” he says, shakes his head, “I’m gonna have to—”

“Live with it?” Eddie completes the sentence for him, eyebrows up, waits for him to nod before adding, “I know, Bar. I know it’s not gonna be easy, and I know Iris might never forgive us, but—”

Eddie’s words vanish in the air, swallowed by the hum of the city around them. He shrugs Barry’s hand off him but catches it before it falls to Barry’s side, presses his thumb against the palm, rubs circles on it.

“Being with you,” he says, smiles _that_ smile again, makes Barry wet his lips, “is the only thing that makes it better.” 

Barry steps to the side when the sidewalk becomes too narrow for them, bumping into a person or two as he pulls Eddie with him. They move through the flood of people in one swift movement and, when they stop in a deserted alley, Barry kisses the stunned expression off Eddie’s face.

“Did you just—” Eddie stutters as they pull apart, his fingers curled around the front of Barry’s jacket as if to keep himself steady. Barry nods his response, smiling, and Eddie shakes his head, breathes out a laugh. “Bar, that’s amazing.”

Barry’s cheeks start to hurt from the way his smile widens. Maybe none of this was supposed to happen; maybe, probably, _certainly_ , they screwed up, but maybe Eddie’s right—

Barry shrugs, chuckling, says, “I know.”

—being together is the only thing that’ll make it better.

_end_


End file.
